Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" leads all films in nominations for the Critics Choice Movie Awards, setting a new record by picking up 13 noms to top "Les Miserables" by two and "Silver Linings Playbook" by three, the Broadcast Film Critics Association announced on Tuesday.

Of course, records are relative at the CCMA, which in recent years has increased the number of categories and also gone to six rather than five nominees in most of the marquee categories, providing more opportunities for nominations than at any other time in the show's 18-year history.

"Lincoln" scored in the categories of Best Picture, Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Supporting Actor and Actress (Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field), Best Acting Ensemble, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was also nominated for its cinematography, art direction, editing, costume design, makeup and score.

"Les Miserables" received 11 nominations, while "Silver Linings Playbook" received 10, "Life of Pi" nine and "Argo," "The Master" and "Skyfall" seven each.

In the Best Picture category, "Lincoln," "Les Miz," "Silver Linings," "Life of Pi," "Argo" and "The Master" are going up against "Beasts of the Southern Wild," "Django Unchained," "Moonrise Kingdom" and "Zero Dark Thirty."

The Critics Choice Movie Awards are chosen by the members of the BFCA, the largest film critics organization in the United States with more than 270 television, radio and online critics. (Full disclosure: I am a member.)

It has been giving out awards since 1995, and prides itself on being the most accurate predictor of Oscar success – though with 10 Best Picture nominees and now with six nominees in six different acting categories as well as in director, original screenplay, animated feature and documentary, it casts such a wide net that it would be hard-pressed to miss any of the key Oscar contenders.

Last year, all nine of the Oscar Best Picture nominees were first nominated by the BFCA, though only 12 of the 20 acting nominees and three of the five directing nominees were.

The most notable films not included among the CCMA nominations are "Flight," "The Dark Knight Rises," "The Impossible" and "Anna Karenina" in the Best Picture category. Naomi Watts ("The Impossible") and Keira Knightley ("Anna Karenina") are missing from the Best Actress category, while the biggest omissions in the supporting categories include Leonardo DiCaprio and Christoph Waltz from "Django Unchained," Eddie Redmayne and Russell Crowe from "Les Miz" and Maggie Smith from "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."

With a new home on the CW Network, the CCMAs added a number of more TV-friendly categories clearly designed to feature nominated films that moviegoers might have seen. In addition to adding acting awards in the action-movie and comedy genres, the BFCA added a category for Best Sci-Fi/Horror Movie, in which the nominees are "Looper," "The Cabin in the Woods" and "Prometheus."

The reshuffling led to a field in which "21 Jump Street" received as many nominations as "Amour" (two), and "The Avengers" received as many as "Beasts of the Southern Wild" (three) and more than "Django," "Flight" and "The Sessions."

The film that has been winning most of the critics' awards over the past week, Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty," received a relatively paltry five nods, though they were in the high-profile categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing.

The 18th annual Critics Choice Movie Awards will take place on Jan. 10 at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, CA and will be broadcast on the CW Network.

You may like...

Steve Pond, awards editor at TheWrap, is also author of the L.A. Times bestseller The Big Show. He has been covering entertainment for more than two decades, and is the industry's most knowledgeable Academy Awards prognosticator.